Friday, February 23, 2007

Extra-organizational Activists & Nonprofits Using the Social Web for Their Cause

As I mentioned last week, I am talking with a marketing class at New College's Green MBA program on Sunday about how nonprofits can use social media for marketing. I figured I'd share my link lists of resources with you, as well as with the students. Besides, it is a lot greener for me to post the links for them than to give them printed handouts!

Many of my examples are of what Allison Fine, author of Momentum: Igniting Social Change in the Connected Age, calls "extra-organizational activists." During my interview with her for NetSquared she said, "Some of the most exciting things going on are what individuals are doing by themselves online, through a meet-up or through a blog or an email, and how organizations learn how to leverage that passion, I think, will prove how successful they can be in this new era."

I've also created lists of environmental and other nonprofits using blogs, podcasts, videos, Flickr and MySpace along with some resources to create your own blog, podcast or video.

Green LA Girl and City Hippy raise awareness about Fair Trade coffee by launching the Starbucks Challenge in October 2005. Readers are asked to go to Starbucks and ask for a cup of fair trade coffee to see if Starbucks sticks with the policy advertised on their web site: They will French press a cup of Fair Trade coffee for anyone who asks for it. Readers were asked to write about what happened when they asked for Fair Trade coffee on their blog, or to email Green LA Girl or City Hippy. As of January 2006, more than 200 blogs had joined the challenge.

ONE Campaign. Goal: Make poverty history.Tools: Videos on Google Videos, podcasts on Gcast, blog posts on site, photos on Flickr, questions on Yahoo! on Answers, networking on Yahoo! Groups, and ONE T-shirts for Yahoo! Avatars.

I Love Mountains. Goal: Stop mountaintop removal.Tools:1. Sign a pledge and email it to friends. Track the impact of your email on a map.2. Watch a movie about mountaintop removal on YouTube.3. View the National Memorial for the Mountains on Google Earth. Each flag represents a mountain that has been destroyed.

6 comments:

Wow I knew that there were people out there who blog to change the world but I didn't know that there were so many! This is becoming a movement in itself. It's so exciting. Thank you for posting this I learned a great deal.

I encourage you to add the http://tutormentor.blogspot.com blog. During May I'm trying to create a blog exchange that would connect people involved in volunteerism, tutoring/mentoring and/or working with inner city kids. Since I host a place based conference on the 17th and 18th of May (http://www.tutormentorconference.org ) my goal is that bloggers talk about some of the challenges facing tutor/mentor non profits, and some of the strategies they can use to overcome those challenges.

Through the blog exchange we can connect with far more people than will ever be able to come to Chicago for a two day event.

I'd love to have you participate just to share what you know about blogging with a sector that at this point does not seem to have many people actively using blogs to tell their story.

I have a slide show id love to post as a comment using html... u can look at it on http://www.myspace.com/noalternativecollective and see if you wana add it to ur site if u want... It's about deforestation in Tasmania... thanks.Direct action volunteer